Acknowledgements
Social Media
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction
· What is the goal of this book?
· Focusing on a subgenre
Chapter 2: The Metroid and the Vania
· 2.1 The Metroid of Metroidvania
· 2.2 Castles and Vanias
· 2.3 Symphony of the Metroidvania
· 2.4 Early Growth of the Metroidvania Genre
Chapter 3: Basic Metroidvania Design
· 3.1: What is a Metroidvania?
· 3.2 Openly Linear World Design
· 3.3 Progression Through Mechanics
· 3.4 The Cores of Metroidvania Design
Chapter 4: The 2010’s Metroidvania Extravaganza
· 4.1 Mania Vania
· 4.2 The Knockout Success of Hollow Knight
· 4.3 Why Metroidvanias Blew Up
Chapter 5: UI/UX of Metroidvanias
· 5.1 What is UI/UX
· 5.2 A Primer on Platformers
· 5.3 Metroidvania UX Design
Chapter 6: Building a Metroidvania
· 6.1 Figuring Out Your Focus
· 6.2 Designing Keys vs. Tools
· 6.3 Open-Ended Level Design
· 6.4 Enemies and Obstacles
· 6.5 Metroidvania + X =?
Chapter 7: The Normal Ending
· 7.1 Do Metroidvanias need to change?
· 7.2 A Confusing Term, With Amazing Gameplay
Glossary
Biography
Joshua Bycer is a Game Design Analyst with over a decade of experience writing for major sites, creating content on YouTube, and the author of the Game Design Deep Dive series. In that time through Game‑Wisdom.com, he has interviewed hundreds of game developers and members of the industry about what it means to design video games.
